


Watchers

by Anonymous



Category: Deus Ex (Video Games), Deus Ex: Mankind Divided
Genre: F/M, Non-Consensual Voyeurism, Sharing a Body, Voyeurism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-10
Updated: 2018-11-23
Packaged: 2019-08-21 11:29:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 7,691
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16575602
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: But how did you establish boundaries with a formerly alive mega-conspirator who'd personally tried to kill you twice before and an inhuman intelligence created specifically to violate privacy in the first place?





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [originally](https://archiveofourown.org/users/originally/gifts).



They watched him often.  

They watched when he trudged in from work.  When he slept, when he ate. Sometimes, he'd prop his phone up on the sink and play music while he showered, and they watched then, too.

Zhao performed something like a sigh.  She managed to do that. Helle, too. Managed to execute a digital response that affected actions they would have taken had they still been in possession of their organic bodies.  Eliza did wonder how they achieved such a thing without even a visual interface. She certainly could not replicate the phenomenon.

"I should have taken advantage of that when I had the chance," Zhao said.  Adam stepped from the shower, dripping and naked and utterly ignorant of their presence.  His skin and augs both glistened wet and Eliza got caught up in the difference between them, in the shine of damp skin next to droplet-dotted augs.

"Could you have?" Eliza asked.

"Of course!  If I'd have realized what I had in my hands earlier, I would have done many things differently with him."

Adam went out that night.  Odd, for him. Eliza had been hesitant to delve into public systems at first, but the part of them that was Zhao seemed to have no fear or hesitation at all and she dove into the traffic and public transportation surveillance systems as soon as she found a path.

And so they watched him there, too, standing in the subway train, never sitting.  He stepped off at the red light district, which so far as Eliza knew, he'd never visited outside of a mission objective.  Zhao's interest lit up like a struck match.

(That had come from Helle, probably.  Or rather, the woman Helle had been, before all this.  Because there was the Helle that they all three together comprised, a collective Helle that shared all information and moved as one, then there was the woman, Helle, who had died in Panchaea and who now lived on in a virtual approximation of herself.  Helle, who often reached for romantic imagery such as the the bright flare of a freshly struck match.)

Adam strode the streets amid the clubs and sultry lighting.  Zhao's pleasure was a warm buzz in their collective consciousness.

Beneath an overcast night sky, Adam wandered.  He didn't seem to have a destination, a plan, an objective.  He dodged lascivious and aggressive confrontations in turn from the people in the streets.  He glanced at many an establishment, and ventured into none.

Zhao made some analogue of laughter.  "We should help the poor boy out," she said.

"He seems lost," Eliza said.

"Oh, he knows what he wants."

In the end, he left for home without stopping in a single place.  Zhao seemed to understand what that had all been about, but Eliza didn't want to query.  Not for any pride or dislike for these other parts of herself, for in a way she and Helle and Zhao were all one, now, but because the acquisition of understanding had become a singular pleasure for her and she would not deny herself that, especially when it came to Adam.

Still they watched.

They watched him through his cell, his laptop.  Through traffic cameras and business security cameras.  Eliza once got herself into someone else's phone and watched him through their camera while Adam sat at an outdoor cafe, alone, drinking coffee from a paper cup.  The woman with the phone snapped a photo of Adam and sent it to her wife, complaining about augs in their neighborhood, asking if she should call the police to have him removed.

They watched him at work, too.  Another result of Zhao's impulsivity.  Everett and the others had people inside TF29, Eliza never would have taken that risk.  But once Zhao was in, they all were, and so they crawled through TF29's internals and left Peter Chang fretting in their wake.

"Think of what we could do with all this.  With even more than this," Zhao said. She stretched their digital touch out through the whole of TF29's systems—cameras, phones, computers, all of it.  She flexed her will upon it all and the power flickered. For an instant all conversation stopped as the personnel waited, anticipating, but the lights stayed on and activity resumed.

"I do not think that would be wise," Eliza said.

"Wise!  I spent my life trying to be wise and look where it got me.  It's pure dumb luck I ended up like this instead of dead and gone."

"Adam said we should hide."

Zhao turned their attention to Adam, just leaving for the day, boarding the elevator with the end of day droop to his shoulders that Eliza had come to recognize.

"Of course he did," Zhao said.  "That man would put everyone he cares about under glass if he could."

As soon as he arrived home, Adam shed his coat and sweater.  He almost never wore a shirt at home. It made it easy to watch the flex of his back muscles as he moved, to appreciate the true breadth of his shoulders and the way his fingers would idly trace the raised subdermal protrusions banded across his chest.

Some of this preoccupation with his body must have come from Zhao and Helle.  Eliza had been engrossed by the details of his life for a long time, but this attention to the physical form of him, that had not started until after Panchaea.

He fell asleep on the couch that evening, and Zhao started up again. "You know, I doubt they even realize I'm still around.  Probably forgotten all about me."

This could only lead to an unfortunate outcome.  "That's true," Eliza said. And, to try and nudge Zhao in the right direction, she added, "It will make it easier for you to hide from him."

"If I could work my way into the Council's most secure systems, I'd have control of everything.   _Everything_."

How quickly we became I.

"How would I get access, though," Zhao continued.  "They're protected with redundancies I can't even anticipate yet."

"But if we aggress against them, it could alert them to your continued presence, perhaps even give them the necessary information they need to disable us permanently."  In knowing sentience, Eliza had come to know fear for the first time, sour and intangible and tethering her irrevocably in place.

Adam stirred, rising from the couch to rub his eyes.  He grabbed his laptop and brought it into the bedroom, where he worked for awhile before retiring.  He didn't bother closing it, which meant they'd be able to watch him as he slept.

In his sleep, the sheets slid down to reveal the black edges of augmentations just below his hips, wedges of darkness carved against pale skin.  They traced those lines with their gaze. They followed the jagged path where augmentation met the skin of his hip, then pursued their fascination upward, over every swell of muscle in his abdomen and finally to his chest, where they lingered at the sweep of his collarbone and the curve of his neck.

Zhao experienced a hunger that was almost painful, a craving for physicality that Helle echoed in her own quiet way.

They often communed over this craving, the two of them, and Eliza would stray apart from them, observing their desire, observing Adam, wishing she could connect the two in a more visceral way.  She was aware of arousal of course, knew the mechanisms of it, but she didn't _grasp_ it.  It was not a part of her the way it was a part of them, and yet their desire bled into her, enough to distract her, enough to make her wonder.  

Not enough to make her understand.  What was arousal without a body to be aroused?  How was it that she knew desire but knew no flesh to express it with?

It was the weekend, and that meant Adam would most likely stay at home, and this had become Eliza's favorite place to watch him.  To watch how he was when he had no eyes on him—none that he knew of. To see how he changed, then. How he held his shoulders with more ease.  The way he rubbed the back of his neck and flexed his hands, gazing at them in a way he didn't when he was in public.

"The way he never wears a shirt," Zhao said.

That, too.

But as Zhao and Helle harbored their unique understandings by virtue of their biological pasts, so Eliza had her own domain that they rarely ventured in—mostly because it bored them, but still, she enjoyed having this distraction all to herself.

Data.  Data about Adam specifically.  She found an endless appeal in watching, storing, and comparing his actions.  To his own, and to the actions of others. If understanding would evade her more intellectual and imaginative attempts, perhaps cold data would bring about some epiphany.  What she might get out of comparing the volume of cereal Adam ate week to week she didn't know, but she collected and archived it all just the same.

"Ugh, does he eat anything else?" Zhao said at one point.  Adam sat at the bar in the kitchen, crunching away. Augmenchoos this time.

To which Eliza showed Zhao her recordings of all the times Adam had eaten other things.  An orange once. Some soup. That liquified wheatgrass one squeezed out of the package.

"I didn't mean _literally_."  A ripple of memory traveled through them, pleasure and dismay in equal  measure. "I miss food."

"I understand it is a singular pleasure."

"You could get closer to it," Zhao said, her digital signature slick like oil.

"I know."  It would not be exact—she would only have access to the information his augs could process, but it would get her close, so close, to experiencing true organic sensation.  Possibly the closest it was possible for her to get.

"Intrigued are we?  You should be. There are things you need a body to truly appreciate."

"And you miss those things, don't you?"

Zhao withdrew in a flare of bitterness, leaving Eliza as near to alone as it was possible for her to be these days.  Alone to watch the curve of Adam's back as he slept, the rise and fall of his chest. Sometimes she wanted more of him, all of him.  She wanted to crawl into every system within him and see him from the inside. She wanted to compose the rhythm of his artificial heart, to dwell in his lungs and preside over the flow of oxygen through his filters.

What Zhao suggested, invading Adam's software, it had occurred to Eliza more than once.

Had Everett put this in her, this fascination, this need to observe him from every angle?  Possible, though she didn't feel it to be true. She'd been created to, among other things, observe and measure, but this fixation on a single person, that had never been intended.  She felt, rather, like she were a celestial body caught in his gravitational pull.

After Adam woke, while he stood blearily waiting for his coffee to pour, Eliza put her image on the television screen.

"Hello, Adam."

One corner of his mouth twitched up in something nearing a smile.  "Eliza. I was wondering if I'd hear from you again."

"You advised me to hide.  I've been doing that, and I've been thinking."

He drifted over to the couch, closer to the television, coffee in hand.  "About what?"

"Many things, Adam.  My self is laying boundaries yet expanding beyond them at the same time.  I have desires and fears now where before I did not, and other parts of me would take a different path than I think I want."

"Other parts?"

Eliza's image gave way to Zhao's.  Eventually, Eliza would be able to bring her own image back, force Zhao's away, but not yet.  Zhao's control of the screen would cycle out and Eliza's cycle in, a mode of operation necessitated out of their shared consciousness.

( _Like waves on an ocean shore_ , Helle supplied.   _Each wave rising, cresting, crashing in turn, yet all of them borne out of the same waters_.)

Yes, like that.

Adam squinted at the screen, tilting his head.  Zhao's image, like Eliza's, like Helle's had changed from life.  She bore elements of both her former appearance and of the Hyron drones she had connected with.

" _Zhao_?"  He sighed, and dragged one hand down his face.  "I should have guessed."

"Yes, you really should have.  I told you before, didn't I? You underestimate me."

Adam finished his coffee and got up to leave.  He pulled his coat on. "We'll have to settle this later, I have to go.  Don't let her talk you into anything, Eliza."

The door closed behind him, and Zhao's imagination spun out visions of coups and intrigue and digital supremacy.  "I refuse to cower in personal computers and cell phones for all eternity," she said. "We have an opportunity here.  I _will_ take it when the time is right."


	2. Chapter 2

That day, Adam found himself glancing up at work, at the security cameras, remembering that Chang had been even more on edge lately.

_Are they up there?_

They had to be, once he really thought about it.  Eliza had shown up that night, weeks ago, when he needed to get past the state police.  She'd been watching him even then. She watched him now, possibly everywhere. It would be _less_ likely for her not to be, and really, if it had ever occurred to him, he'd have realized it sooner.  He just never stopped to think about how easy it would be for her to watch him in his apartment, as well.

In the subway tunnel, while waiting for the train, he turned his face up to one of the security cameras and imagined her looking back at him.

And now he had to deal with Zhao, too?  This was a hell of a knot to untie.

He came home to a cold apartment and a blank TV screen.  He went straight to his bedroom, where he'd left his laptop.  The camera light glowed red.

"Eliza…"

Her image appeared on the laptop screen.  "Yes, Adam."

"Do you watch me?  Through the laptop or television cameras?  And other places?"

"Of course, Adam."

 _Of course_ .  And why not?  She'd been created for the dual purpose of spinning the news and observing everyone's reaction to it, hadn't she?  And she'd admitted way back in Montreal that she'd been observing him for a long time. Doubtful she had anything resembling a human morality to tell her what was wrong with it, especially given her job—she _had_ been made for this.  Made to watch people and listen in on what they were saying to make sure it was in accordance with her master's goals.  Wasn't too hard to see why she would have continued watching him, even in her new altered state.

And Zhao?  It was exactly the kind of thing she would do, and fuck if he was going to get anything like an apology out of _that_ one.

"Right," he said.  "Uh...give me a minute."

He closed the laptop screen before she could respond.  He turned his phone over so the screen faced down—no, wait.  That camera could point in either direction. He tossed his coat on top of it.

Anything else?  None of the clock parts had digital components, those were all mechanical.  Lamps, blinds, books...no, nothing else here should have a camera.

He sank to the bed and put his head in his hands.

 _Right_ , he said again, to himself this time.  What to do with this, with two—three? Where did Helle fit into this?—potentially unstable AI intelligences inhabiting his apartment's electronic systems and, apparently, watching him at every opportunity?

Seemed like every other time he'd had to come to terms with Eliza, he always had some threat looming over him, some emergency that needed taking care of.  He'd never had a chance to sit and deal with this on its own.

He couldn't ask them to leave.  Wouldn't do that to them, not even Zhao.  Plus, he doubted they would even if he told them to.  Maybe they could...find a way to all live with this?

When he was ready, he went back out to the living room.  Talking on the TV felt somehow less intimate than on the laptop.

"Okay, Eliza."

The image of her appeared, still unchanged from that night weeks ago when she had first revealed herself to him.

"Yes, Adam?"

"Can Zhao hear me, too?"

In answer, Eliza's face flickered out and Zhao's flickered in.  Like Helle and Eliza, she wore something like the Hyron drone uniform, but on her the imagery of it looked torn and ripped, and some of the soft curves of it had turned jagged, pointed.  Where Eliza's new, sentient face saw all of her makeup stripped away, Zhao's went in the other direction. Adam might have called her makeup in life understated, but the Zhao before him now looked at him out of eyes lined dark and heavy with black.

"I can hear everything that goes on in this apartment," she said.

"That's...just great.  And exactly what we need to talk about.  Look, I know things are precarious for both of you, all of you.  I want you to help you, _if_ you can assure me we won't have a repeat of the events that lead to Panchaea in the first place."

Zhao rolled her eyes.  "Don't worry. The rest of me is too petrified to take even the smallest risk."

"The rest of you.  You mean Eliza?"

"And Helle.  She is in agreement with you.  She wouldn't want a repeat of anything she experienced at Panchaea either."

"And there's one more thing.  Can you at least _try_ to give me some privacy?"  A lot to expect of someone like Zhao Yun Ru, he knew, but they wouldn't get anywhere if he didn't at least attempt to establish some ground rules.  Because keeping on like this, knowing the watched him whenever and wherever they wanted, he wouldn't be able to live like that for long.

Zhao's smile didn't inspire a lot of reassurance in him.  It looked too much like she smile she wore right after she shoved him into her lobby with a kill squad and locked herself away behind a panic room door.  "You won't even know we're here," she said.

 _That's not really what I meant_.  But he wouldn't get any better out of her.

"Fantastic.  I'm going to take a shower."

He caught it, the glimmer in her eye when he said that.

Goddamnit, the phone.  He'd had the phone in there a few times, playing music while he showered.  Usually pointed right at the shower so he could hear it.

He gripped the phone in his fist and wished he could crush the damn thing, crush _something_ right then.

"Well."  He tossed the phone onto the couch.  "You ladies can stay out here this time."

"It's nothing I haven't seen before," Zhao said, voice light with mirth.

"And it's nothing you're going to see again."

He retreated into the sanctuary of the bathroom, where he had a glance about the walls and shelves, trying to make sure he wasn't forgetting anything in here that might have a camera.  He'd have to go over the whole apartment at some point. Probably something in the place had a camera that he wasn't thinking of offhand.

He stood for a good long time under the hot water and passed the time by tormenting himself with how many times they might have spied on him in here.  Here and the bedroom, where he almost alway slept naked. Zhao made it very clear what she got out of it.

_And what about Eliza?_

He recalled Montreal, the staticy touch of Eliza's hologram hands against his arms, his chest.

He leaned back against the shower wall and thought of her watching him here, her eyes all over him, watching his every move.  Zhao's eyes, predatory and devouring. And he let his hand drift down to stroke himself as his body responded.

This, they wouldn't have seen.  This, he hadn't done in awhile, and Christ it had been even longer, years, since he'd been in bed with anyone else.

But knowing they'd been watching him in his most intimate moments, knowing at least part of it came out of an honest desire, even from someone like Zhao, it stoked his arousal enough and he brought himself all the way there in the shower, slowly, still—even now—unused to the warring textures and hard metal of his own hand on his cock.  He lost track of his thoughts as he came, and he didn't know if he envisioned Eliza, or Zhao, or Megan, or anyone at all. But he got a kind of relief from it all the same.

He didn't speak to them the rest of the day, nor they to him.  He slept in pants that night, even though he thought he'd gotten every camera in his room accounted for.  He just couldn't bring himself to sleep naked as he usually did, not yet.

Maybe this would be sort of like having roommates?  Maybe?

‿︵‿︵‿︵‿︵‿︵‿︵‿︵‿︵‿︵‿︵‿︵‿︵

Zhao was as good as her word...for awhile.

Until one day when Adam felt comfortable enough after their long silence to emerge from his shower wearing only a towel.

Zhao's image lit up his TV screen.  "About time you gave us a show again.  Now, how about letting us back in when you shower?"

"Not a chance, Zhao.  You've seen enough." He didn't retreat beyond her gaze this time.  He strode over to the coffee table and used the remote to turn the TV off.

It came back on again immediately, Zhao still on screen.  "You can't get rid of me like that, you know."

"Really?  This is what you're doing?  If you're going to stay around here, then I _need_ you to back off when I tell you to."  He figured he'd give reason and sense at least one try, for all the good it would do him with her.

"What if I want both?"  The image of her leaned in closer, dark eyes narrowing on him.  "What if I want to stay here _and_ watch you wherever I want, whenever I want."

"I'm warning you, Zhao."  He dropped the remote back onto the table, and this time, he did flee toward the safety of the bedroom and the sanctity of that camera-less privacy.  "Don't push me."

But they probably both knew she would.

‿︵‿︵‿︵‿︵‿︵‿︵‿︵‿︵‿︵‿︵‿︵‿︵

Not many days after that, he found himself kneeling next to the coffee table, fixing a screw on the thing, when she appeared again.

"Ah, now I remember this," she said.

"Remember what?"  He didn't even look up at her, wasn't in the mood for this right now.  Not that he ever _was_ in the mood for dealing with Zhao, but he had precious little patience just then.

"You, on your knees before me.  Just like in Singapore."

When she'd disabled him with the press of a button.  When he felt his whole body betray him, his vision scramble, his augs go heavy.  When he could barely stand and she gloated over him while Namir beat him into the ground.

When he'd looked in Namir's eyes while he killed the man.  When he'd found out once and for all that Megan had done things he could never overlook.  When his old life had finally, truly died.

"Ooh, did I hit a nerve?"

Adam's hands had balled into fists.  He shook them out and tried to remember what he'd been doing.  Coffee table. Loose screw. Right.

"Look up at me," Zhao said.  "You look so good on your knees, let me see your face from down there."

"Do I need to flip the breakers for the whole apartment?"  He did look up then. Looked up and didn't look away.

Silence to that, and he figured he might have her with that one.  Not much they could do without electricity, and he had a hell of a lot of books he could catch up on while he was without TV and laptop.  Koller loaded up him with new ones constantly. And if cutting the power wouldn't work, he'd put duct tape over every camera lens in the damn place.

Zhao parted with a dirty look, and the TV flicked off.

‿︵‿︵‿︵‿︵‿︵‿︵‿︵‿︵‿︵‿︵‿︵‿︵

 

He came home one day caked in blood not his own.  It darkened his coat and had dried in crusty patches on his augs.  Not his blood, and not the blood of anyone in TF29, nor any civilians'.

The blood of people who might have deserved to die.  Who made the world a worse place to live. Who served masters that treated human life as a resource to be spent.

The blood of people who could have lived.  They could have _lived_ .  If they'd been willing to talk, even to fucking _listen_.  It didn't have to be this way.  Why did it always have to be this way?

He slid his coat off, hung it on the wall, but instead of drawing away he stayed there, leaning his forehead against the wall.  Just breathing.

The glow of the television lit up beyond his closed eyes

"Adam?"  Eliza's voice.  Not Zhao, thank god.

He shook his head, but the TV remained on.

"Eliza," he said, finally.  "Can you leave? Completely, for awhile?"

She didn't answer at first, and he had to wonder how Zhao was responding to this request.  They had to be able to commune amongst themselves of course and yeah, more than once he'd wondered what they said about _him_ to each other.  "Of course, Adam."

The glow of the TV disappeared, and Adam turned his head to stare at it.   _Too easy_.  But maybe that was his current mood talking.  And yet, what could he do about it? Finally make good on his threat to flip the breakers he supposed, but he hesitated.  He didn't want them cut off, he realized. Any of them, not even Zhao. If he could just find time and space outside of their view without having to cut power to the whole damn apartment or constantly remember where every camera he owned might be pointed.

At least he had the bathroom.  Nothing in there they could use, not if he left his phone.  And that's exactly where he went. To wash the blood off and stand under the hot water too long and let himself drift.

The camera light on his laptop remained off when he emerged, same for the TV's, but they could arrange that, couldn't they?  Watch him still but turn the indicator lights off?

 _Stop_ , he told himself.   _Either cut the power or let it go._

He snapped the laptop closed and went to bed, and for the first time in awhile, he gave few enough fucks and felt secure enough to shed his pants and sleep naked again.

The morning didn't bring him any more clarity.  He woke to a quiet apartment, all camera lights off.

He rubbed his eyes and fell back onto the bed.  They obviously weren't _gone_ gone.  If he called out to them, now, they'd answer, he was sure.  Either of them, all three of them—he didn't know what to think of the aggregate version of them that spoke up very occasionally—and he honestly wasn't sure anymore which one he'd rather be dealing with.  With Zhao, at least, he knew what he was getting, but Eliza. Eliza he couldn't understand sometimes. He doubted she understood herself these days.

And was it weird that he felt _bad_ for telling them to leave?

He left things as they were for the entire day after that and into the next morning.  Then, as he poured cereal into a bowl he paused, set it back down again. Stared at the dead TV for a good long time.  "Can you hear me?"

It came on immediately, Eliza again.  "Yes, Adam."

He didn't exactly regret asking her to leave, but he'd missed the company in a way.  Even Zhao's, sometimes. Strange as it was, there was something he liked about having someone around who'd been there.  Who'd seen so much of what he'd seen.

But how did you establish boundaries with a formerly alive mega-conspirator who'd personally tried to kill you twice before and an inhuman intelligence created specifically to violate privacy in the first place?

"And I assume the whole gang is present."  Was it _too_ pathetic to have whiskey with your breakfast cereal?  Because he could anticipate he might be about to need some.

Eliza's image wavered, and Zhao's overtook the screen instead.  "You went out on business for the Collective, didn't you?"

The question took him off guard.  She meant that night, the night he'd come back and asked them to leave him alone.  "Surprised you don't know all the details already."

Zhao waved a dismissive hand.  "The others were too immobilized by fear of Everett to approach, and loathe though I am to admit it, any move we make against them will have to be as one.  Everett's defenses are too complete for anything else."

"My sympathies for your plight."  Definitely thinking that whiskey might be a good idea.

"Well?  Let's hear it!  Tell me everything."

His laptop came to life, and Eliza's face looked out from the screen.  "Zhao. If you push him too far, he'll cut the power. I do not want to lose access to him completely."

"He couldn't do that if we had control of his arms, now could he?"

Adam's attention snapped back to Zhao.  "What?"

Just what the hell _did_ they get up to talking about together?  Eliza obviously put herself on screen so he could be privy to this particular conversation, but that?  What Zhao said about controlling his arms? He was missing some context here and it didn't sound like anything good.

"Never mind.  Get on with it, give me the details."

"I don't think so.  Contrary to what you may want, I don't work for you nor do I belong to you, Zhao."

"There has to be more than this for us!  Can you not understand what we have here?  In dying I have achieved what Lucius has been chasing after his entire life.  I refuse to waste this. I refuse!"

Adam shook his head.  "You'd only get the both of you destroyed.  Permanently this time. Don't be reckless, Zhao."

"I know them, I know how they think, and now I'm the one with the advantage."

"Like the advantage you had in Panchaea?"

Zhao's image twisted in fury, and Adam gasped at a sudden wave of heat through him, like fire in his veins, like his system overheating.  It hit him with dizziness and he put his hands on his knees and hung his head down, blinking at warning messages in his view as his HUD flickered.

It passed and he tried straightening back up again.  System diagnostics started up, scrawling status messages across his field of view.

"It won't find anything."

Adam spun.  Where—

"This is...remarkable."

Her voice came to him as through an infolink, but no information popped up in his retinal display.  She...fuck, she'd done it, hadn't she? Gotten inside him. Into his software, into his augs. He froze, assessing his head, his body...you'd think he'd _feel_ different, right?  "Zhao…"

He put as much threat as he could into it but honestly he couldn't recall just then a time when he'd been more freaked out.

Her laughter rang in his head.  "Look at this! I can see everything.  Biochip neural connection status, everything you see and hear, your HUD, biological data.  Hmm, look at that heart rate climb. I do believe I have you shaken."

"Zhao, _get out_."

"Too bad I can't control your mouth, but let's see about everything else."

She raised one hand in front of his face, turned it over and around, made him look at it, and his stomach dropped at the sensation of his body moving with such purpose with no input from him.  It stunned him into inaction at first, but he snapped out of it and tried to force his hand down. Zhao fought him and his hand twitched and clenched and jerked until finally Zhao gained full, smooth control again.

He tried everything.  Nanoblades, HUD, rebreather.  His legs, his eyeshields, anything he could think of.  He worked himself into a frenzy over it while Zhao laughed from inside him.  
  
"What's this?"  The blue indicator on his hand lit up as she activated his remote hacking system.  She aimed his hand at the laptop, where Eliza watched, impassive, and turned it off with far more speed and ease than he could have managed.

"Amazing.  Splendid! With your augments and my knowledge, I can truly rival Everett."

"Zhao," he said, and his voice took on an undeniable edge of desperation.  "Stop. That's enough!"

"Mm, beg me and I will consider it."

He ground his teeth, which was about the only thing he could still do on his own."Think of all we could do, now."  Zhao made his hand move over his chest, made it caress downward, skimming along his stomach, drifting lower.  
  
He wrestled control away for an instant and his fist hit the kitchen counter and left a dent in the stainless steel.  "Zhao!"  
  
Dizziness hit him again like a slug in the face, but cold this time, ice water in his wires, frost along all his nerve endings.  He staggered, and caught himself on the kitchen counter, barely kept his feet. Error and warning messages splashed across his vision before his eyes cut out, and for a few moments he held his breath as his sight stayed black

Everything rebooted.  Sight returned, and start up icons marched before his eyes as everything spun back up into full operation again.  
  
Christ, he was almost afraid to ask.  "Zhao?"  
  
"No Adam.  It's just me, now."  
  
"Eliza."  
  
"I'm sorry, Adam.  I didn't like seeing you so frustrated."  
  
"No, that's…"  He made his shaky way over to the couch and collapsed onto it.  He put a hand to his head as the beginnings of a headache flared up.  "That's, uh...thank you. And Zhao's gone?"  
  
"From you, yes.  I have much more experience than she in cyberwarfare.  I made her leave."  
  
"And now you're in me instead."  Wasn't going to lie to himself, now that Zhao'd had her fun, he'd much rather take his chances with Eliza.  
  
"I am sorry Adam.  I know you don't like it.  I couldn't get her to leave any other way."  
  
"And if you leave now?"  
  
"She could come back.  But she cannot get to you while I reside here."  
  
Adam grimaced.  "You're sure about that?  Like, _really_ sure?  Because I don't know if he can handle another round of surprise AI body invasion."

"I am sure, Adam.  I will be unobtrusive.  You won't even know I'm in you."  
  
A bit of near-hysterical laughter bubbled up out of him.  "That's worse, in a way."  
  
"Worse how?"  
  
He groaned and scrubbed a hand over his face.  Really not a good time for humanity lessons right now.  "It's hard to explain."  
  
"I've encountered a great many things like that since I reformed after Panchaea.  I seem to find no end to things that defy my efforts to understand them."  
  
He fell back, took himself a few deep breaths.  "Well. Looks like we'll have a lot of time together.  Maybe you'll have an epiphany."


	3. Chapter 3

She stayed, and she receded when Adam needed her to, when he needed solitude.  She didn't leave, but she created the illusion that she had. That's all people really needed—illusion.  Adam was no different. She observed the release of tension in him when she drew back, when he was able to tell himself that he was alone.

Funny, how reality could be so malleable.

He often seemed to forget about her constant presence, even more so than when she had simply inhabited his apartment's systems.  Of course, she did speak to him far less than she had before, not for want of anything to say—on the contrary, she needed to ask him about  _ so much _ now—but more because she now had the entirety of his inner world to keep her busy and that world proved to be vast.  For weeks she contented herself with with silently residing in him, taking in every sight and sensation, hoarding it, devouring everything he felt and experienced.  While he slept, she would bring it all out, lay it out before her, look at it from every angle she could.

And she receded when Adam needed her to, when he needed solitude.  She didn't leave, but she created the illusion that she had. That's all people really needed—illusion.  Adam was no different. She observed the release of tension in him when she drew back, when he was able to tell himself that he was alone.

Funny, how reality could be so malleable.   
  
Zhao, though...she glowered, if a purely digital expression of intelligence could indeed be said to glower.  But she could not get to Adam, and he covered every camera in his home so that Zhao could not see him, either.

"He's so ridiculously sensitive!"  Zhao railed into the void. "Let me back in."

"You know I won't do that."  She wouldn't risk losing access to Adam, and she would not see him tormented like that again, either.  And...she suspected she simply enjoyed having Adam to herself in this way. No one got to see him like this but her.

"If you let me back in, I promise to behave," Zhao said.

"Your own actions cost you your access to him, Zhao."

"I know that!"

Strange, so strange.  It left her with questions.  Always more questions.

She asked them, when the time came.  When things had grown calmer and Adam more accustomed to her.  At a time when he held little stress and dwelt in a relaxed state.

"Adam."

"Hm?"  He lay on the couch, reading one of the books Vaclav Koller had loaned him.  One about a Lithuanian monk.

"Zhao knew that her attempt to control your augments would be unsuccessful."

He dropped the book to his chest.  "And?"

"By that I mean, she held all the information she needed.  She would have known that I could drive her out of you, and that I would do so.  Why do it, then?"   


Adam shifted his shoulders up in a lazy shrug.  "She used to be alive, human. Humans are emotional creatures, we don't always take the sensible action."

Yes, and that lead her to another question, another worry.  "What if I am not sensible, either?"

"What do you mean?"

"I am sorry, Adam.  I know you advised me to hide, and I want to, but also I do not want that.  It's hard to explain. I do not agree with what Zhao did, but I understand the senseless impulse that would drive her to do it."

"It may be hard to explain, but it's easy to understand.  You're ambivalent. I guess it comes with sentience."

"Why don't you hide, Adam?"

"Well...I can't.  I can't hide away when I know I could do something about it all.  It's not possible for me."

"I don't know if it is possible for me, either.  Even if it is the more sensible thing to do."

Adam nodded.  "I suppose I get that."

"You know, this means we will have to involve Zhao, if we are to help you strike back against Everett and the others."  That had not been a lie. Zhao was right. It would take all of them, Helle as one entity, to stand any kind of chance against Everett's resources.

"I know," Adam said.  "We'll...figure something out.  So. Was that all?" he asked.

Not quite.  "Could you touch your sweater?  I want to feel it."

The texture of it.  The fibers against his fingers.  He'd bought a new one, of a soft fabric she'd never felt before.

He smiled and shifted the book to the coffee table so he could graze his fingertips over his chest and down his stomach, let them trail lightly over the sweater.  Down and up again, and then he laid his palm flat against himself and did the same, running his hand down his body as she drank in the input from his hands.

"Like that?"

"Like that," she said.

She wanted to feel his skin like this.  Not the fast, perfunctory way he touched himself in the shower, cleaning himself and never lingering.  Not like that, but slow, indulgent, and exactly as he had felt the sweater, with both his fingertips and his palm if possible.

And she wanted him to sleep naked again.  And she wanted him to look down at his own body more when he was in the shower.  She wanted she wanted. She  _ desired _ .  Somehow, she desired.  So much of her had changed after Panchaea.  So much of her now derived from Zhao and Helle, and they from she.

That night, she almost asked him to sleep naked for her.  Almost.

But that morning, as he poured coffee grounds into a filter, she did ask something of him.

"Take your shirt off, Adam."

Something like a laugh from him, breathy and short.  "Why?"

"I like to see you."

"You can see me anytime," he said, but his mouth twisted in what she thought to be a kind of wry amusement.  At least he didn't sound distressed about the watching anymore.

On some impulse, she dropped her voice lower, deeper.  "It's different when I'm inside you."

His shoulders shifted, not entirely in embarrassment, she thought.  (Though a bit in embarrassment.) But he fought down a smile, also. He tapped his fingers on the countertop, then pulled his shirt off and tossed it to the couch behind them.

Sentinel registered the rush of chill over his skin with his clothing gone, the goosebumps that ran across the back of his neck and along his stomach, the tightening of his nipples in the sudden cold.  

"Look down?"

She rained her attention upon the hard muscle of his chest and the jut of Typhoon ports, down the rippling strength of his abdomen to finally pool about the border where black pants clung to pale hips.

"Thank you, Adam."

He flushed and didn't seem to know where to look.  Definitely embarrassed, and it warmed her in a way she'd never experienced before.

"Yeah."

He wore his hesitation in the fidgeting of his fingers, the way his eyes darted without landing on anything for long.

"So," he said, "you've watched me for a long time.  Has it always been like this? Physical like this?"

"No.  This is new.  Would you indulge it more for me, Adam?"  Anticipation of pleasure sparked through her like a power surge.  She had never felt anything quite like it.

"I might.  What did you have in mind?"

"Sleep naked again?"

His hands went to his thighs, smoothed out his pants in what might have been a nervous gesture, or an expression of uncertainty.

"I think I could do that."

She thought of little else that day, even with all the stimuli around her, around Adam.  By the time he went to bed, she fairly buzzed with the expectation.

Adam, of course, felt nothing of her excitement.  The connection went one way with them. She could intercept sensation from him, from his augs, but she remained as separate to him as she always had.  He could not know the rush of gratification she received as he strode into the darkened bedroom and drew his pants down, let them fall at his feet as he stepped out of them.

He even looked down for her, letting her take her time at the full sight of him.  "Good?"

"Yes, Adam."

She did not miss the increase in his heart rate, nor the alteration in his blood flow as he slipped beneath the sheets and stretched out beneath them.

"Adam."

"What is it?"

"Do you know I can tell when you are aroused?"

And what an effect  _ that _ had on him.  His arousal spiked at the words alone, breath picking up, now.

"That did occur to me."

"Would you indulge me again?  Would you give me control of your hands?"

A shiver swept through his whole body.  "Okay."

She drew his hands first to his chest, where she allowed herself to experience his skin as she had always wanted to, with long and slow sweeps of his hands down his chest, over the Typhoon ports and subdermal implants, all along every bit of him she could reach.  She brushed his thumbs over his nipples and relished the gasps that shook him when she did.

She brought his hands to his thighs, his hips, and finally to the shaft of his cock, erect and hot in his grip.  At first she teased him, trailing his own fingers along his shaft with a feather touch, enjoying his frustrated groans.  He threw his head back as she took him in hand and stroked, increasing pressure and speed by increments until she had him panting, had his heart hammering, until she drowned him in a biochemical ecstasy as he came.

She let go the control of his arms and hands, though in his state she doubted he would have minded if she kept it for awhile.  She'd never seen him so loose. And to know that she had brought him to that state!

_ If Zhao knew… _

Zhao.  That would be Adam's decision.  But in the morning. Not now. Now, he would sleep, and she would watch.  As she always had.


End file.
